NetApp CEO Kurian narrows focus to flash, cloud

After keeping a low profile for his first few years on the job, @NetApp CEO @GeorgeKurian spent more time in the spotlight in 2017. NetApp celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2017 -- the year it became the largest storage-only vendor following Dell's acquisition of EMC. NetApp's strategy of moving from its legacy storage products to mainly flash and clustered systems paid off, with four straight quarters of solid growth. In late 2017, NetApp belatedly entered the #hyperconverged market with the NetApp #HCI product built on @SolidFire #flash technology. The NetApp CEO really stepped into the spotlight after the vendor found itself in the center of a mass shooting in Las Vegas on the eve of its Insight user conference. Kurian established himself as the calm amid a tragic storm, as the conference went on after a one-day delay. Attendance was reduced, and the mood was somber. Kurian called for a moment of silence to acknowledge the victims, and he closed his remarks on data mobility with a moving story about his young son's battle with eye cancer. "That was a set of extraordinary circumstances," Kurian said. "We appreciate the support of everyone who stayed to help us through it." Kurian took over as NetApp CEO in 2015, following the ouster of Tom Georgens. At the time, the NetApp cloud fabric was in its infancy, and it was struggling to address a rocky Clustered OnTap rollout. After misreading the flash market, NetApp also had fallen behind all-flash competitors. Now, NetApp's all-flash FAS platform is outgrowing the market, and its cloud strategy is taking shape around its integrated Data Fabric. A 2017 partnership with Microsoft reinforced its cloud progress, as NetApp started to sell OnTap-based NFS file storage as an on-demand service via the Microsoft Azure cloud.
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/252434712/NetApp-CEO-Kurian-narrows-focus-to-flash-cloud

NetApp Announces General Availability of ONTAP 9.3

Announced back in October 2017, @NetApp #ONTAP 9.3 has officially gone GA today. Touted as a free and easy non-disruptive upgrade, NetApp’s comprehensive proprietary operating system is used in a range of storage disk arrays such as NetApp #FAS and #AFF, ONTAP Select and ONTAP #Cloud. With the GA release, organizations will be able to save time and money coupled with impressive performance and security upgrades.

Users will be able to benefit from some pretty substantial upgrades and enhancements to its Data Fabric as well featuring new software releases like NetApp SolidFire Element, NetApp StorageGRID Webscale, NetApp ONTAP and OnCommand Insight. For NetApp, these solutions are vital to its Data Fabric and provide consistent and integrated hybrid cloud data services to its customers. It will help to accelerate and protect data, reduce costs and enable the seamless building of next-generation architectures.

Key features in ONTAP 9.3 include:

Enhance performance -- easier performance assurance with Adaptive QoS that simplifies set up with the streamlined application of QoS policies and automatically adapts QoS levels to changes in the workload. 40 percent increased performance compared to previous versions with software optimizations and path parallelization to deliver more IOPS and lower latency.Create efficiencies and save money – 30 percent increased capacity savings by optimizing deduplication. This improved ONTAP efficiency will be incorporated in the NetApp All Flash Capacity guarantee which provides assurance users will achieve workload specific capacity savings or we will make up the difference.Enhance security and compliance – stronger security and new compliance capabilities with external key management for NVE and multi-factor authentication. Users can also apply compliance policies for legal holds and event-based retention.Harness the Power of the Hybrid Cloud with Data Fabric

With OnCommand Insight, customers will be able to leverage new cloud cost monitoring tools. This will provide a complete picture of IT infrastructure no matter where it is located (i.e. on-premise or in the cloud), which will help organizations realize the potential of the hybrid cloud when using Data Fabric.

Capabilities of OnCommand Insight cloud cost include:

Monitor: Gain visibility of cloud spent across departments, lines of business and applicationsControl: Control, improve and enforce cloud spend behavior across the organizationOptimize: Save cost by leveraging the most efficient vendor pricing structure

StorageReview has a NetApp AFF A300 in our lab that we are currently reviewing with ONTAP 9.3 installed.

http://www.storagereview.com/netapp_announces_general_availability_of_ontap_93

Less than 6 months after its IPO, storage firm Tintri considers selling ou

Less than six months after going public, storage firm Tintri Inc. today said it’s considering a sale of the company following a second straight quarter of disappointing results. In a surprise move, the Mountain View, California-based company said during its third-fiscal-quarter earnings conference call that it’s looking at a potential sale or options to reduce its cash burn significantly. “We are exploring strategic options available to the company to deliver value to our stockholders, including retaining investment bank advisors to assist us in this process and optimizing our operating model to reduce our cash burn rate and shorten the time to generate positive cash flow,” Chairman and Chief Executive Ken Klein said in a statement. Shares of Tintri plunged as much as 14 percent in after-hours trading, though later after the earnings call, shares were up 0.36 percent. They had fallen by the same fraction in regular trading, to $5.48 a share. After another disappointing quarter reported in September, shares had plummeted 13 percent. The nine-year-old company makes storage appliances using all flash-memory chips. They’re intended for virtual machines, or computers emulated in software, and software containers, which bundle an application and other software so it can run on multiple computer operating systems as needed. Both are ways to save money and provide more flexible data center setups in the rapidly developing cloud computing era. In its quarter ended Oct. 31, Tintri reported revenue fell 6 percent from a year ago, to $31.8 million. That was far below the $36.6 million analysts on average had forecast. The company also lost $37.9 million, or $1.21 a share, higher than the loss of $23.8 million, or $6.87 a share, a year ago. The adjusted loss, not including certain costs such as stock compensation, was 79 cents a share. For the fourth quarter, Tintri forecast an adjusted loss of 79 to 83 cents on revenue of $25 million to $27 million. Analysts were modeling 68-cent loss on revenue of $42.9 million. Klein blamed the shortfalls on delayed and reduced purchases by some accounts, though he added that some of those delayed transactions closed in November. During the earnings call, oddly, analysts didn’t ask about the potential sale of the company, but they did have many questions about sales momentum. “Many of the purchase delays that we’ve seen stem primary from concerns about the strength of our balance sheet, which we are addressing, and to a lesser extent realignment of our sales force, which naturally takes some time,” Klein said, adding that the main shortfalls in revenue came from midsized customers who have bought between $400,000 and $1 million worth of products. “We believe that our model can be fully funded through cash generation.” Klein also emphasized that Tintri continued to gain customers, adding 77 to top 1,500 total. He also cited several instances in which he said @Tintri beat out competitors such as @NetApp Inc., @Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s @Nimble Storage unit and @Dell EMC. Analysts and investors were downbeat on Tintri even before its IPO, though it’s unusual for a company to consider selling out so soon after going public. The company faces heightened competition from both traditional storage companies and younger upstarts, many of which are rapidly consolidating into bigger entities. For one, NetApp Inc. acquired all-flash storage provider SolidFire in early 2016. Then there was Dell Inc.’s massive acquisition of EMC Corp. that closed in September 2016. In February, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. acquired SimpliVity Corp., a developer of competing hyperconverged systems. And in April, HPE struck another blow by buying Nimble Storage Inc., another all-flash storage provider, for more than $1 billion. Tintri had raised $61 million in its IPO June 30, but the $7-a-share price at which it debuted, down from its planned range of $10.50 to $12.50 a share, gave it a valuation of only $216 million. That was far below the $785 million valuation in its last venture capital round in July 2015. At the time, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Kieran Harty told Fortune explained the so-so reaction of investors to other enterprise infrastructure companies that weren’t doing that well. “It is kind of like being in a good house in a bad neighborhood,” he said. Before the IPO, Tintri had raised more than $260 million, including a $75 million round in early 2014, a $125 million funding in August 2015 and a secondary round of an undisclosed amount in January.

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/Swisscom-Enterprise-Service-Cloud-Leverages-VMware-Cloud-Infrastructure-and-Management-to-Accelerate-Time-To-Market-1011205259

NetApp Unravels Data Fabric - Tailored Togs Or Tatty Toga?

Information is everywhere. That could almost be a t-shirt slogan couldn’t it? The truth is that it probably has been. The global IT industry is very fond of telling us that data streams are now being created by all manner of not just users and applications, but also devices and all the intermediary layers of connecting technologies that weave together what eventuall,y becomes some kind of fabric that spans the known universe. The result is yet another t-shirt and this time it says something like: data is a fabric, lets weave it together.

What is a data fabric?

As we have discussed before here on Forbes, data as a fabric is a notion that describes information from various levels of computer systems that gets connected (woven) together in a variety of different directions, patterns and routes. This could be data from applications, or it could be user files, database records and (in the world of the Internet of Things) it could also be sensor data and all manner of machine data (such as log files) and so on. In the world of cloud computing, a data fabric also embodies information residing in ALL types of cloud i.e. public, private and hybrid combinations of the two.

We must also appreciate that the data fabric concept also appreciates the difference between data at:

Endpoints - inside applications,Connections - inside network controls and,Services - management tools for orchestration, automation and virtualisation. 

Information management, it’s hip

Only when we appreciate the concept of the data fabric can we start to see how complex data management is becoming. Only when we start to understand how firms are now positioning themselves as specialists in this space can we start to judge whether they are using the data fabric to now weave some beautiful piece of tailoring, or whether it is being slung around customers’ shoulders like some ungainly toga.

Once quite happy to call itself a storage company, NetApp is these days solid about its positioning as an information management company. But then what IT firm isn’t? The firm now claims that its Data Fabric technology features as an ‘integral part’ of over 300,000 customer’s systems and software deployments.

“Proliferating application deployment models and data formats across hybrid IT results in organizational data being distributed across on-premises and cloud environments,” said Laura DuBois, IDC group vice president for enterprise storage, server and infrastructure software. “This creates challenges for IT staff that range from data access and visibility, to protection and application integration, to security and compliance, to labor-intensive processes for data placement. The NetApp Data Fabric offers a range of hybrid cloud data services to address these challenges and allow organizations to efficiently manage and derive value from the totality of their data.”

NetApp

NetApp chief executive officer George Kurian, never knowingly tatty in the togs department.

Information is everywhere. That could almost be a t-shirt slogan couldn’t it? The truth is that it probably has been. The global IT industry is very fond of telling us that data streams are now being created by all manner of not just users and applications, but also devices and all the intermediary layers of connecting technologies that weave together what eventually becomes some kind of fabric that spans the known universe. The result is yet another t-shirt and this time it says something like: data is a fabric, lets weave it together.

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What is a data fabric?

As we have discussed before here on Forbes, data as a fabric is a notion that describes information from various levels of computer systems that gets connected (woven) together in a variety of different directions, patterns and routes. This could be data from applications, or it could be user files, database records and (in the world of the Internet of Things) it could also be sensor data and all manner of machine data (such as log files) and so on. In the world of cloud computing, a data fabric also embodies information residing in ALL types of cloud i.e. public, private and hybrid combinations of the two.

We must also appreciate that the data fabric concept also appreciates the difference between data at:

Endpoints - inside applications,Connections - inside network controls and,Services - management tools for orchestration, automation and virtualisation. 

Information management, it’s hip

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Only when we appreciate the concept of the data fabric can we start to see how complex data management is becoming. Only when we start to understand how firms are now positioning themselves as specialists in this space can we start to judge whether they are using the data fabric to now weave some beautiful piece of tailoring, or whether it is being slung around customers’ shoulders like some ungainly toga.

Once quite happy to call itself a storage company, NetApp is these days solid about its positioning as an information management company. But then what IT firm isn’t? The firm now claims that its Data Fabric technology features as an ‘integral part’ of over 300,000 customer’s systems and software deployments.

“Proliferating application deployment models and data formats across hybrid IT results in organizational data being distributed across on-premises and cloud environments,” said Laura DuBois, IDC group vice president for enterprise storage, server and infrastructure software. “This creates challenges for IT staff that range from data access and visibility, to protection and application integration, to security and compliance, to labor-intensive processes for data placement. The NetApp Data Fabric offers a range of hybrid cloud data services to address these challenges and allow organizations to efficiently manage and derive value from the totality of their data.”

The NetApp Data Fabric has recently been augmented with new software releases including for NetApp SolidFire Element OS, StorageGRID Webscale, ONTAP and OnCommand Insight software. As key elements to the NetApp Data Fabric, this software is supposed to bring integrated hybrid cloud data services to help customers work with contemporary datacenter architectures.

NetApp VP for product Brett Roscoe insists that his firm’s approach to data fabric technologies has done well due to the dramatic increase in data centric workloads in the cloud. "[In this world,] the need for managing data across traditional IT and multiple cloud solutions becomes critical,” said Roscoe.

Tailored togs or toga?

#NetApp #SolidFire appears to have the stitching pattern to produce a coordinated piece of fabric. The technology provides integration across operating systems and the firm’s SolidFire Element OS allows customers to consume (arguably) more agile, software-defined storage in a way that best aligns with their business goals. The #StorageGRID Webscale 11 product provides  integration with Amazon Web Services ( #AWS ) for implementation of hybrid cloud data pipelines with AWS.

NetApp ONTAP 9.3 software is designed to enhance performance and simplify setup with streamlined application of QoS (Quality of Service) policies and automatically adapts QoS levels to changes in the workload.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2017/10/09/netapp-unravels-data-fabric-tailored-togs-or-tatty-toga/?c=0&s=trending#12987a591365

SolidFire Founder Dave Wright Returns To The NetApp Stage For An Encore

@DaveWright, founder and CEO of @SolidFire when that company was acquired by @NetApp, signaled his return from sabbatical Wednesday by running across the stage in response to a call for a stagehand to unveil the latest product based on SolidFire technology. Wright, who helped engineer NetApp's 2016 acquisition of SolidFire, in April left the company on a sabbatical. He made his surprise reappearance at the NetApp Insight 2017 conference during a Wednesday keynote introducing the pending availability of the new NetApp HCI hyper-converged infrastructure appliance which was built in large part on SolidFire all-flash storage technology. [Related: NetApp CEO Kurian Opens Insight Conference With Moment Of Silence For Las Vegas Shooting Victims, Intros Data Vision] When the NetApp HCI presenter asked for a stagehand to help pull the covers off a rack full of NetApp HCI appliances, Wright dashed from the left of the stage, stopped in the center, waved at the audience, and then dashed to the right of the stage to pull the cover off. He then pointed at the rack, smiled, and left the stage. A NetApp spokesperson declined to respond to a request for more information, other than to confirm that Wright had indeed returned from sabbatical and that he will be acting as an evangelist for the company's SolidFire technology going forward.

http://www.crn.com/news/storage/300093451/solidfire-founder-dave-wright-returns-to-the-netapp-stage-for-an-encore.htm

FlexPod SF converges NetApp SolidFire onto Cisco hardware

SUNNYVALE, California — #NetApp today launched its second #SolidFire-based converged product this month, this time in partnership with #Cisco. The #FlexPod SF extends the FlexPod converged infrastructure reference architecture lineup that combines NetApp storage with Cisco UCS servers and switching. But instead of using NetApp FAS storage, FlexPod SF runs the SolidFire Element OS on Cisco rack servers for the storage piece of the infrastructure. FlexPod SF also includes Cisco UCS blade servers and Nexis Ethernet switching in the iSCSI scale-out block storage system.

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/FlexPod-SF-converges-NetApp-SolidFire-onto-Cisco-hardware

Datos IO Teams with NetApp to Deliver Transformational All-Flash Storage and Cloud Data Protection Solution for Next-Generation Data Center Applications

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- #MongoDB World ‘17—  #DatosIO, the application-centric cloud data management company, today announced the availability of its new cloud data protection solution that extends the #NetApp Data Fabric by providing next-generation backup and recovery for next-generation databases and cloud applications. Enterprises can now leverage the performance, reliability, and flexibility of NetApp ONTAP software and the agility and web-scale benefits of NetApp #SolidFire array technology with the data protection capability of Datos IO RecoverX software. With this solution, which Datos IO is demonstrating with NetApp at MongoDB World ’17 this week at booth #20, customers can scale business-critical applications on MongoDB and be confident in the recoverability of data at scale and maintain high application uptime.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170620005527/en/Datos-IO-Teams-NetApp-Deliver-Transformational-All-Flash

We are deeply troubled by the ... depth of Toshiba’s desperation'

Round-up The week has seen an acceleration of #NVME news - #Aparna, #Intel, #Micron, and #XIO - and cloud-related news as well, with #Rubrik picking up a huge funding round. These were the headline items but there was a whole lot more going on and here's a representative selection. #Code42 Backup provider Code42 is partnering with #Okta, which it calls the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise. Okta's single sign-on authentication works alongside Code42's data security and visibility tools to help protect data shared in the cloud. Through Okta, IT can manage employees access to any application or device, allowing users to sign on across domains with a single online identity. Joe Payne, CEO and president at Code42, issued a canned quote: "Our customers are deploying in the cloud at an increasing rate and to do that effectively they need the world's leading cloud-based identity security technology." The company's CTO, John Durant, said: "This partnership helps organizations strike the balance between data security and user productivity. By running unobtrusively in the background, it allows users to quickly start doing actual work while giving administrators peace of mind." Code42 has a technology integration with Okta and its Identity Cloud. By passing authentication details from the users' organisational credentials to the service provider in a secure and private manner, Code42 customers can sign onto a secure cloud from different organizations and multiple points of entry. The Code42 customers can also sync users and groups with Active Directory for free via Okta Cloud Connect (OCC). The linking of security and backup in the cloud is becoming stronger and stronger. Datrium DVX storage array supplier Datrium, in a move that will baffle and surprise Sphere3D doubters, has partnered with Sphere3D to the extent that the latter's HVE line has obtained "Datrium ready" nodes certification. Sphere 3D is offering Datrium Ready Nodes on its HVE server line. Datrium marketing VP Craig Nunes told us: "We have primarily been working with the HVE guys. They have been doing good business with us in the channel, and was the impetus for them creating the Datrium Ready Node bundles." Datrium's own DVX Compute Nodes are Dell-based. Sphere 3D bought HVE (Hybrid Virtualization Engine) ConneXions in January. Previously it has experienced an angry investor pushing for a major restructuring, and it’s odd microvisor line has puzzled people, along with its consistent multi-quarter, multi-year loss-making. HVE “Datrium ready” node bundles combine Datrium DVX data nodes with HVE servers as compute nodes. The servers are preconfigured with Datrium DVX software and host-local flash, together with the appropriate networking to support a turnkey implementation. There are server bundles available in two distinct sets of configurations for different workloads: Server virtualization bundles are benchmarked to provide 50, 100, and 200+ virtual machines with consistent application performance and scalability, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), bundles are benchmarked to provide 250, 500, or 1000+ virtual desktops with predictable end-user friendly performance and scalability. A customer provided a quote. Eddie Alford, Director of Technology, Azle ISD, said: "“Azle Independent School District (ISD) has been partnering with HVE for more than four years. Their VDI products as well as their server virtualization has been a key part of our operations. This past year, we purchased Datrium. The integration of Datrium into our existing HVE server virtualization has been seamless and connected with our network without issue. We are very pleased with our open convergence solution.” Time to re-evaluate Sphere 3D then. Druva End-point protector and file sharer Druva, calling itself a cloud-first SaaS supplier, has set up new cloud data centre offerings in Canada, the UK and Hong Kong. It says customers there can host their data in locations that best meet their specific requirements around data residency, location and transfer. They can run secure deployments in compliance with local and regional data protection and privacy rules. For example, Canadian customers can store data in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which sets guidelines on how, and where, Canadian citizen data is stored. In the UK, as it begins the process of leaving the European Union, as part of Brexit, Druva says its data centre "will be critical for meeting data sovereignty regulations." And the new Hong Kong region will give customers there the ability to meet the varying local data protection guidelines of the region. Druva's public cloud is based on the public cloud vendor infrastructure, such as Azure. Check out Druva's public cloud features here. Nexenta Open source storage software supplier Nexenta has upgraded its Edge product, a scale-out block, file, and object storage platform to v2.0, and says it features: Delivery of iSCSI block, NFS file and S3 and Swift object services Web-based GUI for management and service provisioning Patent-pending Quick Erasure Coding (Quick EC) technology for both active and cold object archives Cluster-wide inline deduplication, compression and unlimited snapshots/clones Strengthened support for Docker Container-Converged infrastructure with seamless integration with Docker Universal Control Plane for single pane of glass management of containerized applications All-flash deployment profiles with support for SSD SATA, SAS and NVMe-based storage SSDs Shared namespace between file and object storage Nexenta's director of product management Oscar Wahlberg gave out a canned quote: "With the introduction of NexentaEdge 2.0, features like Quick EC allow customers to build multi-petabyte, capacity-optimized object archives without sacrificing performance and use the same solution to create a container-converged storage infrastructure with tight integration and seamless management.” The company stresses that Edge object storage is fast, claiming that its Quick EC technology works without affecting read or write performance. It "eliminates the performance penalty usually associated with accessing objects in traditional erasure coded solutions and is especially beneficial, for large capacity S3 object clusters." Carrying on the Edge product's container focus, the Docker Engine plug-ins enable integration into any Docker Enterprise Edition deployment and users can deploy storage and application services as containers, across servers that provide both storage and compute in a container-converged model. The Edge product seems to us to be instrumental in moving Nexenta into non-ZFS (NexentaStor) environment, and its sales should rise as users adopt Docker containers Toshiba Toshiba says that NetApp SolidFire SF4805, SF9605 and SF19210 all-flash arrays are using its non-encrypted HK4 SATA SSDs. Daniel Berg, VP SolidFire production operations at NetApp, said: “With the addition of Toshiba’s non-encrypted SSDs, NetApp SolidFire products can now address markets where non-encrypted drives are required.” This news snippet is another pointer to the worth of Toshiba's memory business. That memory business sale saga is ongoing. A JP Morgan analyst, Rod Hall, thinks that if WDC were to buy the thing it could see its earnings go up 30 per cent. An $18bn deal to buy the memory business could be entirely debt-funded. This Barron's blog has more on the topic. WD CFO Mark Long said: "We are deeply troubled by the tension between the depth of Toshiba’s desperation and their willingness to do things that we didn’t think they would do in other situations. A lot of this, in the initial phases, is going to be overshadowed by the desperation of Toshiba to deal with their crisis as it has grown from a problem to an all-consuming disaster." WDC reckons it has veto rights over any sale, apparently disputed by Toshiba, which could get cash for its recapitalisation from higher bids than WDC's. Bits and pieces DCIG says its 2017-18 Small/Midsize Enterprise All-flash Array Buyer’s Guide id available. It says the guide weights, scores and ranks more than 100 features of twenty-four (24) small/midsize enterprise-class all-flash arrays that achieved rankings of Recommended or Excellent. These products come from eleven (11) vendors including Dell EMC, Fujitsu, iXsystems, Kaminario, NEC, NetApp, Nimble Storage, Pivot3, Pure Storage, Tegile, and Tintri. More info here. E8 Storage says a major but unnamed financial institution in New York City has deployed its high-availability, shared NVMe flash storage E8-D24 appliance, using dual-port Intel data centre SSDs. The E8-D24 shared storage replaces local SSD storage in servers because the NVMe speed network access is effectively as fast as local SSD access and provides a larger and shared flash store than a individual server or workstation's direct-attach SSDs. NetApp is closing down separate SolidFire.com, with marketeer James Whitemore saying: "Today (Friday), everything gets fully Intergrated into NetApp.com.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/05/week_storage_news/

Toshiba Announces Collaboration With NetApp To Utilize Non-Encrypted HK4 SATA SSDs In SolidFire All-Flash Arrays

#Toshiba is announcing that its non-encrypted HK4 SATA SSDs are to be utilized in select #NetApp #SolidFire® all-flash storage arrays that do not require encryption. This will allow NetApp to broaden their offering and reach into new markets. Toshiba is a key supplier of SSDs for NetApp SolidFire solutions, and today’s news reinforces Toshiba’s commitment to growth, and comes on the heels of an IDC market report naming them as the fastest growing storage vendor in 2016 in the $17 billion global SSD market segment, as we previously reported here.

NetApp will be utilizing the non-encrypted HK4 SATA SSDs in their SF4805, SF9605 and SF19210 solutions, providing low latency, low power requirements, and high performance that is data center optimized.  Key applications include web servers, data analytics, file servers, databases and virtualized environments.  The HK4 series of SATA SSDs are Toshiba’s first non-encrypted SATA SSDs to be utilized for the SolidFire products, and complement the existing series of encrypted HK4 SSDs.

According to Daniel Berg, vice president of SolidFire Production Operations for NetApp, “Our customers require predictable and highly efficient performance; and they get that with Toshiba Data Center SSDs.  With the addition of Toshiba’s non-encrypted SSDs, NetApp SolidFire products can now address markets where non-encrypted drives are required.”

Jeremy Werner, vice president of SSD marketing and product planning for Toshiba, states that “Toshiba established its US-based Storage and Research Design Center to bring innovation closer to its customers like NetApp.  We are committed to continually offering NetApp a comprehensive portfolio that helps meet the evolving needs of their environment and customers.”
http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/toshiba-announces-collaboration-with-netapp-to-utilize-non-encrypted-hk4-sata-ssds-in-solidfire-all-flash-arrays/

SolidFire CEO Dave Wright spins down at NetApp – for now

Updated #SolidFire boss Dave Wright is taking a long break from work – less than eighteen months after the storage company he founded was acquired by #NetApp. In March, Wright briefed El Reg on NetApp's #hyperconverged appliance development project, which is based on SolidFire tech. Now, according to SolidFire's former chief technology officer Val Bercovici, Wright is letting go of the reins, at least for a while. We understand Wright is taking a much-deserved hiatus with the family. Wright founded scale-out all-flash array startup SolidFire, and turned it into a concern for which NetApp paid $870m in December 2015. The SolidFire array was sold by NetApp alongside its E-Series and FAS all-flash arrays, with Wright becoming VP and GM of SolidFire within NetApp. The E-Series flash arrays were focussed on speed, all-flash FAS on flash performance inside an ONTAP data management services environment, with SolidFire being for cloud service providers where characteristics like scale-out and its noisy neighbour-killing QoS made it attractive

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/24/solidfire_ceo_dave_wright/

NetApp's Lipsin On Hyper-Converged Plans And Navigating The Cisco Relationship

#NetApp Plans Key Channel Role In Its Coming #HyperConvergedInfrastructure Rollout NetApp, the storage industry's largest independent vendor, surprised the IT industry recently with plans to introduce its first real foray into the hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) market using its #SolidFire #allflash storage array as a base. Given that the solution is still a few months away from formal introduction, NetApp has been stingy with details. SolidFire founder David Wright early this month discussed some of the technology related to the coming offering, but was unable to say much about the channel implications. That task has fallen on Bill Lipsin, NetApp's vice president of worldwide channels, who shared some of his company's plans to make channel partners a critical part of its hyper-converged infrastructure technology roll-out. For an in-depth look at some of the technology behind NetApp's HCI plans, see CRN's detailed conversation with Wright. For a look at how NetApp will tie HCI with converged infrastructure, or CI, turn the page.

http://m.crn.com/slide-shows/storage/300084161/crn-exclusive-netapps-lipsin-on-hyper-converged-plans-and-navigating-the-cisco-relationship.htm?itc=hp_slideshow

SolidFire chief talks up secret upcoming hyperconverged

#SolidFire boss Dave Wright talked with El Reg and discussed the vendor's upcoming hyper-converged system based on its own nodes. Wright was SolidFire CEO when #NetApp bought the company towards the end of 2015 and is now VP and General Manager of SolidFire within NetApp. We tried, but were unable to get him to talk any about product details or timescales. He confirmed that the product will carry on using x86-powered processors and that SolidFire software will provide the server SAN capability, not needing #VSAN or other server SAN software. It will, of course, have sufficient CPU power and memory to run applications, but he didn’t specify suppliers, CPU types, core numbers, etc. Wright said he sees gaps in the existing hyper-converged infrastructure market around running enterprise workloads and says the SolidFire HCI will run tier one workloads. This is not going to be a product aimed at running VDI-type workloads in remote and branch offices with limited node scalability counts. So, we think, quite a lot of CPU horsepower and RAM is going to have to be added to the existing SolidFire nodes to cater for this.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/solidfire_dave_wright_interview/

NetApp's David Wright On SolidFire And Building A New Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

When #NetApp acquired #SolidFire just a little over a year ago, NetApp talked about the unique value of the SolidFire all-flash storage solution, particularly regarding how it applies to the building of hyper-scale, all-flash data center infrastructures. But secretly hidden behind the veil surrounding the two vendors' plans lurked another possibility: Building NetApp's first hyper-converged infrastructure solutions based on SolidFire. NetApp was a pioneer in converged infrastructure thanks to its long, and successful, #FlexPod partnership with #Cisco. And FlexPods are also now becoming available using SolidFire's all-flash storage arrays. But NetApp has been slow to hyper-converged, with nothing to show so far except a brief attempt to develop solutions based on VMware's now-discontinued EVO:Rail solution. That is about to change. NetApp plans to shortly introduce its first real foray into the hyper-converged infrastructure market using SolidFire as a base. Ahead of that announcement, SolidFire founder David Wright used a conversation with CRN to provide some details and talk about why SolidFire is the right choice for NetApp's plans.

http://m.crn.com/slide-shows/storage/300084059/crn-exclusive-netapps-david-wright-on-solidfire-and-building-a-new-hyper-converged-infrastructure.htm?itc=ticker

CEO Says NetApp Will Soon Introduce Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solution Based On All-Flash SolidFire Tech

#NetApp is planning to shortly enter the fast-growing #hyperconvergedinfrastructure market with an all-flash offering based on its #SolidFire technology. NetApp's CEO George Kurian, speaking to financial analysts on Wednesday while reporting the company's third fiscal 2017 quarterly results, said NetApp will be unveiling a hyper-converged infrastructure solution based on NetApp's SolidFire all-flash storage technology that will be tied to the hybrid cloud.  The hybrid cloud is the true architecture of the data center going forward, Kurian said

http://m.crn.com/news/storage/300083780/ceo-says-netapp-will-soon-introduce-hyper-converged-infrastructure-solution-based-on-all-flash-solidfire-tech.htm

NetApp: Solidfire to get some Snap functionality but not NVMe

#NetApp #Solidfire execs talk of roadmap #SnapMirror and #SnapVault functionality in Solidfire, but #NVMe will have to wait until customers are ready to pay for it When NetApp bought all-flash specialist Solidfire for $870m a year ago, it gained a well-regarded set of all-flash products that successfully addressed the cloud provider and enterprise market segments.

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450411612/NetApp-Solidfire-to-get-some-Snap-functionality-but-not-NVMe

Solidfire is 'for people who **CKING HATE storage' says NetApp Founder Dave Hitz

#VMWORLD 2016 #NetApp founder Dave Hitz has apologised to a #VMworld 2016 audience for being slow to produce proper flash arrays. In a session on the future of storage he shared with SolidFire founder Dave Wright, Hitz said that work on Clustered ONTAP had consumed more resources and time than the company anticipated, leaving it short of personnel to design flashy kit. Once ONTAP was done, NetApp was able to throw more people at Flash. “We were late to market,” he admitted, but feels the company has managed to emerge from the delay in decent shape. 85 per cent of ONTAP sales last quarter were clustered, he said. “That is pretty far along. That is enough to say we are mostly done.” He's therefore pleased that despite starting late, NetApp to claim the number two slot in recent analysts' assessments of flash array sales, behind only #EMC. Hitz is also happy that Solidfire gives #NetApp a way to sell to people “who f*cking hate storage”, a line he said he borrowed from Wright. Wright did not protest he'd been traduced and said “People who run virtualisation are all over the details of storage.” Hitz chimed in: “People who buy SolidFire say they don't want to hear all of this stuff about storage.” Hitz continued by saying he now thinks of SolidFire and NetApp as representing the smartphone generation vs. the PC generation.“I love my smartphone,” he said, saying that while he can edit Word documents on that device, “I still do lots of important work on my laptop.” The NetApp founder also revealed the genesis of the decision to acquire SolidFire came in a lost sale. Hitz recounted how a vice president of sales at NetApp confidently predicted an imminent meeting would cap a long pursuit of a cable operator and result in a substantial purchase order. Instead the meeting resulted in that sales veep heading to Google to learn about SolidFire and how it was possible for the upstart to topple the top-tier storage player. That experience led Hitz and NetApp to consider the emerging class of buyer – usually folks concerned with application development, not infrastructure - that have little no interest in the nuances of storage, but wants a pool of it that's easy to manage and scale. Hitz thinks there's a transition on in storage from traditional scale-up arrays to scale-out kit and that the shift is seismic along the lines of the move from Mainframe to Unix or minicomputers to PCs and client/server. While the prospect of that shift makes ONTAP engineers “throw up in their mouths a little bit”, the founder thinks that selling both types of storage can't hurt NetApp because it can now address two distinct markets. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/01/netapp_founder_dave_hitz_says_solidfire_is_for_people_who_fking_hate_storage/

SolidFire CTO dishes on NetApp all-flash array strategy

#NetApp all-flash offerings currently include two other arrays; the All Flash FAS (AFF) built around NetApp's #ONTAP operating system and the EFF Series for high-performance computing. Each all-flash platform is designed for different use cases and has its own engineering teams. However, there is a link between the traditional NetApp and #SolidFire teams. Longtime NetApp executive Val Bercovici took over in April as SolidFire CTO. Bercovici has spent 18 years at NetApp in the office of the CTO and served as its "cloud czar" for the past seven years. We spoke with Bercovici about NetApp's integration of SolidFire flash, why buying an all-flash system made more sense than building one and how SolidFire fits in with NetApp's Data Fabric hybrid cloud strategy.

http://searchsolidstatestorage.techtarget.com/news/450301436/SolidFire-CTO-dishes-on-NetApp-all-flash-array-strategy

VCs: Can't see an IPO or acquisition for your startup? Don't throw in the towel

There surely must be an alternative to the two preferred exits for VC-backed startups – IPO or acquisition – in these times of near-VC funding drought and what seems like IPO fatigue. It used to be simple: build a storage startup that could take money and customers from the mainstream vendors, sit back and wait for competitors to come running with open wallets or bankers singing songs of IPO riches. Acquisition was more certain and we have seen round after round of acquisitions. In no particular order: #EqualLogic, #3PAR, #Compellent, #DataDomain, #CleverSafe, #Storwize, #TMS, #XtremIO, #DSSD, #SolidFire, and many more. IPOs in the storage space have been fewer, and many have been problematic. #ViolinMemory is still fighting the problems that came with it to its IPO. #Nimble Storage has had its hiccup. #PureStorage still has everything to prove and has had a mini-hiccup. #Nexsan tried and tried again for an IPO and was eventually acquired by Imation, where it is now the core product line. #Nutanix has filed for an IPO but delayed it. Why is the storage IPO scene such a troubled one?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/19/the_third_way/

NetApp CEO Kurian: Buying SolidFire was a long-term strategic bet

Interview Chief executives of multi-billion dollar corporations have to have several characteristics, including steel, the ability to see things as they are, and possession of a personal value system that meshes with their corporation’s culture. Some CEOs, when promoted to the top chair after long employment in a corporation, sometimes lack the ability to see things without corporate lens bias. #NetApp CEO George Kurian gained his seat at the top table through an internal promotion after the previous internally-promoted incumbent was found wanting. Does he have these abilities, particularly the ability to take the hard decisions? El Reg talked to him at NetApp's HQ in Sunnyvale to get a closer look at the man tasked with resurrecting the company's growth. Questions and answers have been lightly edited for brevity and flow. El Reg What did it feel like as a 17-year old coming into Princeton and President Reagan's America from India? George Kurian The world’s gotten a lot smaller since when I came. I think at the time that I came it was quite a cultural shift between the US and India. I think for example, I’d never seen an ATM, a bank teller machine before, I’d never seen a computer before, so those were new experiences. You found that in the United States there was an astonishing gap between rich and poor. We learnt that quickly when we went to New York for the first time in the mid-eighties. El Reg And then you did your best to cross it. George Kurian That’s right. It was astonishing to see the gap between rich and poor in the US, but you also realised that one of the things that has been an extraordinary part of the American story; the ability to, you know, move yourself up if you are willing to commit to doing the hard work, and if you get a few lucky breaks.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/11/netapp_ceo_george_kurian_interview/

It's all go in solid state world. Pure Storage ups the ante

There has been an interesting change in the enterprise storage world as the increasingly affordable and high-performance world of solid state drives has gradually but inexorably increased penetration into an area formerly the domain of spinning disk drives. #PureStorage

Of course, the value proposition for solid state drives is obvious: the fact that almost everyone is toting a mobile device that has its entire storage made up of flash has increased the awareness of the approach. That and the rapidly improving economics of actually delivering flash storage into enterprise customers has meant that vendors such as #Solidfire and Pure Storage have managed to grow rapidly.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3084646/storage/its-all-go-in-solid-state-world-pure-storage-ups-the-ante.html